The main reason you buddy is finding more coins hunting behind you.

[Sandman]

If I heard it once, I heard it a hundred times, "My friend's metal detector must be better than mine because he finds coins behind me that my detector didn't pick up.

This isn't so much the fault of a cheap detector but the way you sweep the coil. Also the higher off the ground you keep it, the less area it "sees." If you are picking it up on the ends of the sweep you are only getting max depth right in front of you.

 

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[erikk]

You are correct. That is why I always scrub my coils , try to use DD's when ever possible and OVERLAP at least 50%. More if I am in a hot area. Also if it is a good area do a north - south and then reverse and do a east-west and dig good 1 way signals

 

[sailrunner]

Very informative Sandman...Thanks

 

[EasyMoney]

SandMan has the right idea. There is something else I'd like to share with you all though;

Jack Gifford of Tesoro Electronics says that the iron mineralization in the ground makes it absolutey necessary that we operate our detectors 2" off the ground at a constant and even level, if we want maximum depth from our detectors. I.E. 1" of grass plus 1" of air. . It's because there is a null point that our detectors operate on, one that performs best when we aren't fighting the automatic null level created by our detectors in relationship to the ground (matrix), a "package deal" viewed by our detectors. A matrix is the combined and total material that we hunt in, be it water, soil, coke, granite, etc. The detector does not view it as a lot of different thngs in the ground, but it does view it as #1 the dominant mass (matrix), and #2 the anomaly (the target). When a detector "sees" a target, it automatically determines the electroconductivity of the matter, and this is why some detectors discriminate better than others, such as Tesoros. It's because the detector recognizes that one metal or substance is more or less electrically conductive than another. Analog meters show us this and so do digital meters on DFX's and Explorers. Compasses and Tesoros do this the best, and usually are the ones that when placing a piece of steel on the ground and cancelling it, and then putting a nickel right on top of it, it will give a clear and absolute signal. These two detectors do this the best of the best, and it's because of the superior combined extremely fast auto-retune/auto-threshold to null relationship built into them.

Compass Electronics invented auto-retune and auto threshold, plus DD coils too, and without them we would still have a lot of problems with bad ground.

Now this optimum search height should be obeyed almost religiously according to George Payne, if you have many minerals in your search ground. He talks about it in his notes on the Millinium, Baron, etc. He claims that the more mineralization that's in the ground the more we should tend to the optimun, perfect, 2" search height.

I had a lot of trouble believing this when I first read it, but after awhile it does makes a bit of sense to me. It is the same as viewing a sine wave on a scope. The "null" operates from +1/2" positive to -1/2" negative as with Compasses and Tesoros, or up to +3" positive and -3" negative with other machines like Garretts, Minelabs etc. This is the VERY reason why (most) Minelabs have to be run so slow, it's because they DO run so slow in returng to the auto-null. It is necessary because of so many electronic calculations regarding mass, signal strength, voltage, built into highly analizing detectors such as Explorers, Coinstrikes, and DFX's.

In the sine wave there are the upper (+) parts of the wave (positive voltage) with an imaginary line drawn between them and the lower waves exactly in the middle of +/-. it looks like a snake going up and down and forward (or backward) as the case may be. And then there are the lower parts of the wave (-) negative voltage. If we operate our detectors too close to the ground then we drive and PUSH our detectors into the positive and it can easily create a lot of positive and unnecessary noise coming from our detector. In any bad soil by doing this we would be defeating our desire to get the optimum performance from our detector, or, in other words, we would be losing our depth potential and at times even losing good targets too, especially if we go too fast.. In air it wouldn't matter much at all though, and in very lightly mineralized soil it wouldn't matter as much.

People first began "scrubbing" their coils because TR's (transmit/recieve) detectors did not operate the same as the BFO's and VLF's. TR's sent a signal that was returned much like a pair of walkie-talkies send back and forth, but VLF's and BFO's, etc read "disturbed" fields, not signals coming back to the receivers, a totally different concept, and one that is not dependent on optimum performance coming from maintaining a certain height. Only a threshold was important with a TR. BFO's had a much different problem though and it involves writing scrolls to explain that situation. TR's though, were dramatically affected by iron mineralization to the max, because we had to maintain our null ourselves, rather than the detector helping us along with it.

HH

EasyMoney

 

[Michigan Badger]

Good post sandman.

Also, today with the tone machines I think many miss targets simply because they understand the tones they're hearing.

Deep coins can sound a lot different than those 3 inches deep.

Badger

 

[Dimeman]

Good post!!!!

 

[Willy]

Another couple of reasons he/she might be finding goodies right behind you is, first, what's being disc'ed out by you vs. buddy and, secondly, what direction the coil is swinging when going over a target. If, let's say, you swung over first an iron target and, immediately after, a silver target, chances are that the silver will be disc.'ed out with the iron. Now, if your buddy comes up from behind an swings over the same 2 targets, but from the other direction, he/she will probably end up with the silver 'cause it would probably not be masked by the iron. ..Willy.

 

[birdman]

Very good post Sandman! I saw a show on the history channel called battle field detectives and there was a guy hunting the field looking for relics and his swing looked like a tire swing.His coil was so far off the ground and never level.I am surprised he found anything.

 

[Shortstack]

Another couple of reasons he/she might be finding goodies right behind you is, first, what's being disc'ed out by you vs. buddy and, secondly, what direction the coil is swinging when going over a target. If, let's say, you swung over first an iron target and, immediately after, a silver target, chances are that the silver will be disc.'ed out with the iron. Now, if your buddy comes up from behind an swings over the same 2 targets, but from the other direction, he/she will probably end up with the silver 'cause it would probably not be masked by the iron. ..Willy.

This is the very reason for double sweeping BEFORE moving forward with an overlap. As an example: I'm right handed, so my first sweep will be right-to-left; followed by a left-to-right sweep OVER THE SAME STRIP. Then, I'll move forward by about a 1/4 to 1/3 overlap. Also, I do not swing the coil like I would a weedeater. I keep my coil swings to a path about 3 feet wide. Takes more time to cover any given area, but , hey, I'm in no hurry. Any goodies have been there a while and most likely will be there until I come back for my next go around.
If someone else comes along and finds them--so what. There's always more around. That's a very good reason for living in a small town with lots of history, permission to search most of it, and only about 4 or 5 other detectorists.

 

[Sandman]

Great post Easy Money! Lots of information.

 

[Farmercal]

You would think more folks that have been detecting for years would know this but I witnessed with my own eyes that they do not. I was at a organized hunt about a month ago and after about 20 minutes into the hunt (when things started simmering down), I looked at the other hunters running about 5 miles an hour and swinging their coils from about 5 inches high on the left down to 1 inch in the middle and back up to 5 inched on the right. Well after all of these high swingers stopped to count their finds from this hunt, I found two more targets (bills wrapped around coins), that countless coils had overlooked. They were only 1 inch in the ground too. Listen to Sandman folks, he knows what he is talking about.

 

[EasyMoney]

You've got some good ones too SandMan. You are the Beach Guru and everybody here knows it.

One thing I always found funny was the old expression; "they may call us OLD, but they ALWAYS call on us". It may not be true, but it is sort of funny.

I tend to prefer the technical end of metal detectors over the actual use of one, but I think I've only been skunked for keepers about 6 times. Not too bad for all these years I guess. I went with a young lady I met on here one day to check out an area or two and she used her Cortez, a very dedicated woman who had no trouble digging at all. She however, didn't find any coins there, just a lot of larger junk. I found 8 coins and a couple of junk jewelry items, 9 keys, and a part of a fishing lure plus a couple of light bulb screw ends.

We got run out of there, very peacefully, but still were asked to leave. I attribute that little bit of success not to my experience, but to the abilities of the cz-70 I was using. Sometimes the right detector has to be used in the right area. I kinda' felt sorry for her though, because her Cortez has the same innate problem that my Tejon does, it does not and will not ground balance any closer than 2" off the grass, not the ground. That puts people at least 3" off the ground and maybe even 4 or 5". I believe that that alone was her problem, because she could not maintain the proper, continual depth of searching, which as I wrote earlier, should be 2".

I live in White's territory, it's own back yard, and it would seem that all the stuff would be gone from here, but it isn't. I still find old coins in the old parks nearby. That doesn't make much sense to me at all. Most are under 4 inches too. The deepest was at 7". I mostly use the CZ first, and the Compass afterwards. I seldom use any other detectors around here, these two works the best. I think the detector works better than the operator. I'm almost religious in maintaining my search height level. I figure that the Masters know more about it than I do, just as you do Sandman about beach hunting.

FarmerCal has it figured out too. Optimum height is very, very important.

 

[Willy]

The Cortez also only GB's in all-metal. The Disc. mode is preset at the factory. ..Willy.

 

[borninok]

Great post, Sandman! After reading this, I went out to my yard and started swinging in my normal pattern....................OMG! I realized....I've been doing what you indicated as the wrong method. OMG......I know better...I just didn't realize that I was doing what I was doing. Guess my mind kept thinking about finding the gold & silver....and not realizing my swing was causing me to miss things.

Thanks again!
--Mel

borninok

 

[Sandman]

Thanks for all the praise guys, but I consider myself as still learning. I used to hunt the land a lot more, but now my knees won't allow me to kneel. You ever try to recover a coin while standing up? That's why I prefer sand and water hunting now, I can use a scoop.

 

[hollowpointred]

correctamundo sandman! technique is EVERYTHING .........well at leat 90% with the machine at 5% and luck at 5%. .of course none of this matters if you hunt where the good stuff aint! research is the first step!